


"The Fishers Also Shall Mourn"

by a_carnal_mink



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-30
Updated: 2011-09-30
Packaged: 2017-10-24 04:28:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_carnal_mink/pseuds/a_carnal_mink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The moments we didn't get to see during 5.21 and 5.22. Castiel's POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"The Fishers Also Shall Mourn"

**Author's Note:**

> Website: [weltonbmarsland.com](https://weltonbmarsland.com/)

  
The first thing Castiel realised as consciousness returned to him – for the in-between had been but nothingness – was that he was no longer standing on a warehouse's concrete floor. In fact, he wasn't even standing for long. He was upright and then he wasn't any longer. He could smell the ocean and fish. Lots and lots of fish. He saw the ocean, smelled it, but barely had time to process it, as his feet quickly stopped being under him and he found himself colliding with another body, a slightly larger body, but warm. Around them, lurching movements and surprised shouts. Masculine voices yelling and swearing.

'What the hell?!'

'Where the fuck did he come from?!'

'Shit!'

'SHIT!'

The man upon whom he had fallen squirmed below him, both of them sliding and causing sickly squelching noises to rise up from the luckily soft but unfortunately fishy spot they had landed. Castiel felt a moment of unfamiliar panic. He couldn't find purchase, he couldn't find his feet. Whichever way he moved – or at least _tried_ to move – the sludgy mass beneath slid away and conspired against him in slimy contrariness.

'Fuck!' the man beneath him gasped, his voice young, probably winded; most likely as a consequence of Castiel's landing.

'Get him off me! Someone help him up! For fuck's sake!'

Guffaws on all sides erupted, then hands began grabbing at them. Large, wet, overly-gloved hands. Castiel was manhandled up, wrenched upright, the grey horizon tilting wildly first one way in his panicked vision and then another.

'Fuck, he's bleeding!' noted a gruff voice.

'He's all carved up,' added another, somewhat distastefully.

'Where the fuck did he come from?!' someone again demanded to know.

'Get him below. And Petey, too. Jerome! Get that bycatch together again! This fucking boat's a mess!'

Castiel's vision swam and darkened, barely allowing him to be reminded of that time he passed out in the Winchesters' arms after making the journey back to the future. For the next he-knew-not-how-long, the only things Castiel registered were snatches of rough conversations that happened near or over him.

 

'He needs a doctor.'

'He doesn't look like he's dying anytime soon.'

'Uncle Seth!'

'Don't.'

'But he's hurt!'

'I didn't deny that. Just said he didn't look like he's dying.'

'We should head back in and get him – '

'No can do, Petey. Haul has to be got in. You know that.'

'But Uncle Se – !'

'Three families, Petey! Three families depend on this catch. I gotta get the haul in.'

'But – !'

'No buts. Clean him up, if you want. Get those cuts bandaged. But that's as much as we can do until we're back in dock. Sorry, Petey. That's my final word on it.'

 

'At least you don't seem to be bleeding anymore. Not much anyhow. God, you're a mess though. Whoever the hell did this to you… shit, I dunno, I don't even wanna think about it. Who'd even do that to another person? Carve 'em all up like this? You must've crossed paths with some seriously fucked up individuals, dude. What'd you do to make them wanna do something like this? I mean, this is just brutal.'

 

  
'I swear, Petey, you have got to be the luckiest fag whoever fagged in Fag Town.'

'Fuck off, Jerome.'

'Honestly. Even when you try to butch up and decide to join the family business, finally, you still end up with the universe throwing pretty guys on top of you. Who'd you blow to get luck like that?'

'I said fuck off, Jerome!'

'Tell me, baby cus, you can trust me – did ya get hard while he was on top of you? Huh?'

'You'd better leave now.'

'Why? So you can keep stroking him?'

'I'M CLEANING HIS WOUNDS!'

'Oh, so that's what the fag brats are calling it these days, hey?'

'You're pathetic.'

'Sure. Keep telling yourself that, bub. Real men'll be up on deck, if you ever feel like joining us again.'

 

'They think I'm some sort of failure just 'cos I'm, I'm gay, okay? I think I am anyway. Seems that way. Don't know why I feel like I can talk to you like this. Huh, probably 'cos you're unconscious. Hm. Anyway. I mean… so what, right? So I like other dudes. Big freaking deal. Does that stop me from being able to drop a fucking net in the water like any other guy? I don't see how…'

 

When Castiel returned to proper consciousness – as opposed to dark-visioned semi conscious states where he was aware of his torso being naked and washed and various members of the crew talking over him or shouting at the one who was tending him – he was laying on a slim bed in a poorly lit cabin. Beside him sat a young man in his late teens, flaxen haired and rough hewn, dressed in the expected waterproof and cold-proof garb of a commercial fisherman. Castiel's saviour and nursemaid, he supposed. The entire room around them pitched and roiled. So he was still onboard a fishing vessel, then.

'Where am I?' he managed to ask around a bout of coughing. His head hurt immensely, not unlike how it had felt after he drank a liquor store.

The youth sitting beside him snapped to attention. 'You're awake! Shit, are you okay?'

'Where am I?'

'Below deck on my uncle's shrimp trawler,' came the reply.

Castiel winced. 'Where?' he asked again through the pain in his head, willing the young human to understand that more detail was required.

'Um. We were about an hour out when you arrived. Out from Delacroix, that is.'

That was the most useful item of information the child had given him yet. 'Delacroix,' Castiel repeated. 'Louisiana?'

The youth grinned a little crookedly. 'Well. Yeah.' He said it in much the same way Castiel had heard Dean say the syllable "Duh" to Sam on numerous occasions.

Castiel nodded, then immediately regretted it as the movement made his pulse throb at the temples.

'Did you… did you fall from the sky?'

An appropriate query. One whose larger connotations Castiel didn't really want to think about at any length. 'I, I don't think so. I'm unsure precisely what happened.'

'You don't remember?'

A small lie could not hurt in this circumstance. 'No,' Castiel said as firmly as he could muster. 'I don't remember anything.'

Experimentally, he lifted his head a little way and peered down at the bandages affixed to his chest. 'You tended to me?'

There was the sound of a scraping chair as his companion moved slightly closer. 'Yeah. Hope you don't mind. Your shirt and coats are still here, I just had to take them off while I cleaned you up. You're all, erm, well... Your chest's all carved up, man. Looks like devil worship or something. Who did that to you?'

Castiel let his head fall back onto the bed heavily. This was no time for truths. How could he possibly expect this innocent-eyed young man to believe him anyhow? 'I don't know,' he lied. 'I don't know what happened.'

An awkward silence stretched between them for the next several minutes, the boat creaking around them and shouts from the boy's crew members drifting down to them. Becoming aware of something, Castiel lifted a hand to his head and gingerly felt at his vessel's hair. It was damp.

'I had to wash it a bit,' the boy offered. 'You, er, had fish guts in there. From the bycatch.'

'Bycatch?'

'That stinky stuff you knocked me into when you arrived. We're hauling shrimp, right? Everything else that gets caught in the nets – that's bycatch. Kinda hard to stand up in that stuff once you're in it.'

'My apologies, ah… ?'

'Pete. I'm Pete.'

Ah, yes. The other voices had called him "Petey" – one the boy had called Uncle and another that had called the boy "cus". A family business, then. A family boat.

'Peter the fisherman,' Castiel said slowly, turning his gaze up toward the youth. 'You're not the first one I've met.'

'You go fishing much?'

'No. Not in a long, long time.'

'So what's your name? If you don't mind me asking? That is if, y'know, you still remember and all?'

Castiel hesitated. 'Dean,' he offered quietly. Lying again. Oddly, the transgression felt a little easier each time.

'Dean,' Peter repeated. His eyes started smiling and his mouth quickly joined in, the expression making him look all the younger for the softness it leant his face. 'I like that name.'

'Indeed,' Castiel agreed. 'I'm most fond of it, too.'

'And you really don't remember if you fell outta the sky?'

Castiel coughed for a moment. 'No. I don't think I Fell.'

'Then how did you get here?'

'A very good question.' Nauseatingly, Castiel's vision swam once more and he squeezed his eyes shut against it.

'You scared the shit out of us.'

Castiel lapsed into unconsciousness before the boy had even finished.

 

The next brief visit of perception gave Castiel the awareness of being in motion; a much more mechanical motion than the pitching of a boat. Carefully, he opened his eyes and found himself in the backseat of an automobile. For one hopeful, optimistic moment he thought it might be Dean's car, but he quickly realised it didn't sound or smell right. He wasn't quite fitting along the backseat either, his knees bent uncomfortably, and Castiel knew that he could fit practically supine in the back of Dean's beloved Chevrolet. Optimism left him with a rattling groan.

'Hey, you're awake,' a young voice said over him. Peter the fisherman was peering down at him from the front passenger seat. 'Take it easy, dude, we're almost at the hospital.'

'How long?' Castiel managed to utter.

'How long to the hospital?'

'No. How long was I, have I been…'

'How long were you out? Hours.' Peter frowned just slightly. 'Had me worried, man.'

Castiel would have apologised for troubling the youth, but tendrils of blackness were coiling through his mind once again and no matter how hard he railed against it, unfathomableness claimed him for its own.

 

The first words Castiel heard when lucidity restored itself were, strangely, "Has Grace gone?". If the panic he had experienced on the fishing trawler when he first landed there was unfamiliar, then the alarm and terror he felt upon hearing those words was beyond belief. How three little mortal words could drag him bodily and mentally into full and glaring consciousness, he wasn't sure, but awareness and horror were suddenly blindsiding him.

There were things attacking him and Castiel, with a soldier's experience that stretched over many millennia, came up fighting. First – needles, tubes, machines, bags of liquid that wrenched and ripped and spilled. Next – hands, human hands and many of them. Castiel knew he was shouting, sensed he was losing some terrible battle. Another needle, and Castiel cursed them all for goat-breeders and slipped away again.

 

'Welcome back, Blue Eyes. We thought you were a goner for sure.'

Castiel blinked, letting his surroundings slide rather sickeningly into focus. The woman who leaned over him had a name-badge pinned upon her starched bosom – "Grace".

'You're a nurse,' he stated simply. His mouth felt curious, like his tongue had swollen in size.

'That's right.' An encouraging smile.

'And your name is, is Grace.' O, the universe and its ironies.

The encouraging smile got wider. 'So, our reading comprehension seems restored. That's promising. I'd say you're doing pretty good for a guy we all thought was brain damaged.'

Castiel looked down at himself, Jimmy's body feeling at once more real than ever to him, but also more alien. He felt more deeply tethered to this body than he had before, more aware of its peculiarities, its pains and sensations. It looked all wrong though, dressed as it was in some sort of patterned gown instead of Jimmy's black suit and overcoat. A bizarre rush of mourning for Jimmy's blue necktie washed over him.

'Grace,' Castiel croaked and looked back up at her. 'I need to make a telephone call. And, and I believe I'd like some water.'

 

Dean looked at him with such blatant fondness that Castiel was surprised Sam didn't pass some remark about it. Clearly, the severed finger Dean held – bloody drips spattering across the linoleum tiles in a haphazard mapping of Dean's steps – was a sufficient distraction.

'You're surprised to see me, I know,' Castiel said. The slowly scabbing cut on his left eyebrow itched again and he scratched at it in irritation.

'Hey, don't pick at that.' Dean's smile eased into being but then tightened and shrunk. Dean was reining it in, Castiel could tell. He'd become well versed in Dean Winchester's mannerisms, their semaphore and sign-posting far easier to read than Dean's oft-times baffling and culturally coded conversation. 'Awesome timing, Cas.'

'I couldn't get here sooner.'

'Yeah, well. But you didn't get here any later either.' The brightness of Dean's smile flared slightly before he coughed and gave his attention back to the finger he was still holding. 'Thanks, man,' he muttered as he bent his head and concentrated on getting the Horseman's ring off.

 

Mid-point on the eight hour drive back to Sioux Falls, Dean pulled into the parking lot of an all-night diner near Fort Dodge and sent Sam in for coffee and doughnuts. The number of truckers making the same pitstop made for a bit of a queue for Sam and time enough for Dean to leave the driver's seat a few minutes and stretch. Castiel watched him from the backseat for all of three seconds before getting out to join him. He wasn't prepared to be grabbed and pressed against the car, strong hands firm upon his shoulders. There was maybe an embarrassing wheeze he gasped out as Dean loomed into his personal space.

'Dean?'

'What the fuck were you thinking back there, Cas?' Dean hissed at him, his eyes catching the reflection from the diner's sign.

'Retrieving Pestilence's ring, clearly,' Castiel hissed back.

Dean made a frustrated noise, his hands shoving Castiel's shoulders once and then letting go. 'I don't mean back there back there! I mean back there in Van Nuys!' His hands dropped to Castiel's chest, fingers loosening the tie and twisting it aside, making short work of the first few buttons of Jimmy's white shirt.

Castiel tucked his chin down and watched, fascinated, as Dean bared enough of his chest to be able to see the scabbed-over evidence of Castiel's latest sacrifice. He looked back up into Dean's face, shadowed by the parking lot's poor lighting and sorrow for what he was looking at.

'You stupid… self-sacrificing… sonofabitch.'

'We were out of options, Dean.'

'You could've died. Again!'

'But I didn't.'

Slowly, Dean let his gaze travel back up to meet Castiel's. They stared at each other while Dean blindly rebuttoned Jimmy's shirt. 'You're one fearless little fucker, I'll give you that. The pluckiest angel in the garrison, huh?'

Castiel remained silent.

Dean sighed quietly and set about fixing Jimmy's tie. 'There's some shit I gotta fill you in on.' He slid the tie knot right the way up to Castiel's throat and neatened it, just like that time in Maine when they were playing at being Federal agents, but then he seemed to realise what he'd done and loosened it again, sliding the knot back down to where Castiel usually wore it. Dean looked him in the eye again and his expression hardened. 'Zachariah's dead.'

That wasn't exactly unexpected. 'Was it Michael?'

Dean swallowed loudly, kept his gaze steady on Castiel's. 'It was me. I did it.' Castiel felt his eyes widen and Dean nodded at him once as if to say he knew exactly what Castiel was thinking. 'I don't know how the hell that's supposed to work,' Dean continued. 'I mean, only an angel's supposed to be able to kill another angel, right? But I did it, man. I shoved your shiny angel sword right through his skull. That's not all though.'

'Dean. Tell me.'

Voice dropped incredibly low and intimate, Dean licked his lips and said, 'I watched it.'

A shudder worked its way across Castiel's upper back. 'How do you mean, you watched it?'

'I didn't even close my eyes, Cas. I watched that bastard burn right out of his fucking meatsuit. It didn't even sting.'

'That's – '

'Not possible?' Dean gave a dark chuckle. 'Tell me about it. Can I ask you something?'

'Anything.'

'Could I be like Anna, maybe? Am I some sort of fallen angel who never even knew it?' There was unmasked fear in Dean's eyes as he asked. For one short moment, Castiel almost felt the desire to laugh at them both – the angel who was afraid of being human and the human who was afraid of being angel.

'No, Dean, I don't think so. Other angels would have known you immediately were that the case.' He paused for a split second then added in barely more than a murmur, ' _I_ would have known you.'

Behind them, sound bubbled out of the diner as the door swung wide and deposited Sam back out into the night. Dean suddenly seemed to notice how close he was standing to Castiel, their bodies most definitely in each other's space, Dean's hands still lingering on Jimmy's coat lapels. He stepped back abruptly, clearing his throat and shooting Castiel an unreadable look.

'Hell of a body mod you got yourself there, Cas,' he said a little too loudly, a little too forced. 'I hear scarification's pretty popular in some circles.' He winked at Castiel as he opened the driver's door. 'Kinky shit.'

Castiel had little idea what Dean was talking about, but he took the hint that their previous conversation was over and slid back into the car himself.

 

About a quarter of an hour out from the Singer Salvage Yard, and with dawn's early light flooding into the car, Castiel's phone rang. Sam and Dean exchanged a look as Castiel dug into coat pockets to find the device.

'Who else besides us ever calls you?' Dean all but demanded into the rearview.

Castiel ignored him in favour of answering his caller. 'Yes?'

'Dean?' It was a young voice shot through with an accent Castiel had come to appreciate. 'I called the hospital to check on you and they said you discharged yourself!'

'Hello, Peter. Sorry to frighten you. But I am well. You shouldn't worry.'

'Oh shit, I'm not calling you too early, am I? We're outta dock already, but I didn't think about how early it is for everyone else!'

'No, that's not an issue. I was awake.'

'Cas?' Dean called over his shoulder. 'Who is that?'

'A… a friend, Dean.'

'You got other friends now?'

Peter also had questions. 'There's another guy called Dean there?'

Castiel felt a headache coming on. 'Peter, I can't really talk right now. I have work to do.'

'Oh, okay. Sure. Sorry. Just… you are okay, aren't you?'

'Yes,' Castiel assured him. 'Thanks to your care and assistance. I'm very grateful.' He could very nearly hear the boy beaming into his phone at the other end of the call.

'I just need to tell you something real quick,' Peter said urgently, as though afraid Castiel would hang up on him any moment. 'While you were here, while I was taking care of you, I, well, I talked to you a lot. You were out of it most of the time, so I don't think you'd remember hardly any of it, but fact is I said things to you that I haven't really ever said properly to anyone else.' He sighed into the phone. 'I don't think I'm explaining this all that well.'

'I believe I know what you're talking about,' Castiel told him. 'Your voice was very soothing, Peter, while I drifted in and out of consciousness. I heard… portions of what you told me.'

In the front seat, the Winchesters exchanged another significant look, no doubt trying to piece together the one side of the conversation they were hearing.

'Oh. You did. Huh.' Strangely, it sounded as though Peter couldn't quite decide if he was happy to have been heard or not. Castiel was sure the youth would settle his mind upon it at a later time.

'You are a good person, Peter,' Castiel said as forthrightly as he could muster. 'A strong young man with a pure heart. Don't languish beneath the judgement of those around you.'

'Hm. Easy for you to say.'

'Not at all. Every step I walk is dogged by the judgement of my brothers.'

'You talk a lot like a priest or something. Anyone ever told you that?'

Castiel felt a small attempt at a smile tug at one corner of his mouth. 'I really must work now, Peter.'

'Yeah, me too. Thanks for… for falling outta the sky when you did.'

Castiel nodded absently at the window pane beside him, the risen sun slanting a shaft of prismatic light through the thick glass and onto the shoulder of Dean's dark jacket. 'You may keep this number, should you require it.'

'Okay. Thanks, Dean.'

'Yes,' was all Castiel said in reply before ending the call and putting his phone back into Jimmy's coat pocket.

 

'So…' Dean passed Castiel a bottle of beer, knocking his own against it in the usual human ritual and leaning against Bobby's kitchen counter beside him. 'You've got some toy boy called Peter now, huh?'

'And you're back to throwing sexual innuendo at me,' Castiel retorted.

'Can't help it when I see something so pretty,' Dean said, sounding almost as though the call-back were automatic. His accompanying smirk dulled somewhat as the statement settled heavy between them. 'Sorry,' he muttered into this beer, suddenly contrite. 'Stupid shit just spills outta me sometimes, man. Don't mean nothin' by it.'

'Why do you put so much time and energy into words with no meaning?'

'God, you just never let up, do ya?'

Castiel took a swig of beer, the coldness of it burning his throat as he swallowed. 'Fearless little fucker,' he quoted back at Dean and fixed him with a steady gaze.

Hearing Castiel say that – and especially _that_ – clearly took Dean by surprise, for he choked on the mouthful of beer he was attempting to drink. Splutters and coughing quickly gave way to a bone-deep, thunderous laugh that rumbled all through Bobby's kitchen and all through Castiel's senses. Castiel was suddenly, achingly aware of the timbre of Dean's voice, the long line of his throat as he threw his head back to laugh, the pleasing curves and plains of his chest and belly, the vibration of his laughter softly shaking the counter they leant against, his unique scent. Castiel's mouth went dry. Thirst, that strange and foreign sensation to which he'd only very recently been introduced, was making itself known again – though it confused him as to why, when he'd only just partaken of the beer Dean had given him.

His gaze settled on Dean's free hand, the one that wasn't holding a bottle of beer, resting on a tense jeans-clad thigh, fingers graceful and sure splayed wide across the faded blue denim, fingertips pressing in with the tension of Dean's amusement.

_Oh._

It was a terrible moment, really. For all the wonder of Castiel's improved human awareness, for all the new and distinctly stirring ways he was beginning to react to such simple stimuli as the slant of the sun through car windows, the pitch of a male voice, the beautiful strength of working hands – for all that, he was filled with lamentation.

'Aw, man.' Dean's laughter died away and he cleared his throat, still grinning. 'Thanks, Cas. I needed a laugh like that.' He leaned slightly closer to Castiel and bumped their shoulders together chummily. 'Hey,' he murmured, finally noticing Castiel's complete lack of bemusement. 'What's up?'

'My human perceptions.'

Dean blinked at his unhesitating response. 'Okay, Captain Literal. What the hell's that supposed to mean?'

Castiel allowed himself to lean their shoulders even closer together than Dean had done, fixing Dean's gaze to his own by will. 'I'm suddenly seeing you… in a different light.'

The smallest flinch skipped through Dean's expression at Castiel's words. 'Uh, I get it. So I'm not your Daddy's fancy work of art anymore, hey?' The self-deprecation rolled off him in waves, making Castiel frown slightly.

'Dean,' he said, soft and close, closer than ever before. 'Why do you always assume the worst?'

For one glorious, terrifying moment, Castiel was perfectly alive inside his human body, full of certainty and desire, purpose and expectation. He and Dean were about to… about to…

'Don't be a fool, Cas.'

Castiel recoiled as though Dean had hit him. As if Dean had hit him and the hit had actually hurt. Dean _had_ hit him once, had hauled back and snapped a clean punch right into his jaw, the force of it carrying all of Dean's righteous fury and frustration. To Castiel, it had felt little more than a tickle. But this – O, heavenly Father – this pained him right through to the filaments of his grace, his barely-there, fading and forsaken grace.

The fact that Dean looked as though he was experiencing every second of blinding agony right along with him was hardly any consolation.

So this was what it felt like. What _feeling_ truly felt like.

'I,' Castiel tried to say, tried to say something, fumbled mentally for the certainty and purpose he had felt mere moments ago.

'Don't,' Dean said again, but this time his voice cracked on it, as though the syllable broke him halfway out of his mouth.

The two of them stood awkwardly together for several seconds more, then Dean moved away hesitantly, steps heavy and boots scraping on the floor. 'Gotta find Sam,' he muttered. 'Need to talk about this fucking plan. This stupid fucking – ' He cut himself off, shaking his head slowly. He cast one last look Castiel's way, then turned resolutely and left the room, left the house.

In all of Castiel's many years of existence, even in the wake of all the countless long and hard-won battles he had fought, he didn't think that he had ever felt an exhaustion like the one that crept upon him then. His head and his heart heavy, the stupor of jaded world-weariness settling over him, Castiel suddenly felt like giving up on it all. Felt like finding somewhere to lay down and let sleep offer him refuge and oblivion.

 _Angels don't sleep_ , he thought. But what the hell. It was the end of the world.

  
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast angle into the brooks shall lament,  
and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish.  
_Isaiah (chapter XIX, verse VIII)_

**Author's Note:**

> Written August 2010.


End file.
